Will Bermuda cash in from UK lottery ads?

A major advertising campaign for the UK National Lottery has given Bermuda nationwide publicity in Britain, the Bermuda Sun can reveal.

The island was chosen as a dream destination by the National Lottery to highlight the difference a major win could make to players’ lives.

The advert — posted in nearly 36,000 Lottery outlets across the UK and seen by millions of people — shows an idyllic beach scene and the slogan “Today Bognor, tomorrow Bermuda.”

Bognor Regis — an English southern seaside resort which fell on tough times after the 1970s explosion in cheap air travel – is famous for having been insulted by King George V, who went there in the 1920s to recuperate from illness and took a strong dislike to the town.

Tourism Minister Shawn Crockwell said: “We couldn’t have asked for a better free promotion of Bermuda in the UK.

No doubt many of the millions of people who play the lottery would prefer to be in Bermuda which is seen as the world class destination that it is.”

He added: “Hopefully anyone who wins the lottery will remember Bermuda and come for a vacation with their friends and family and see for themselves how we are ‘so much more’.”

Shadow Tourism Minister Wayne Furbert, who held the Cabinet post in the last Government, added: “Anything which helps us in terms of advertising has my support.

“The UK market is one of those we need to increase, so if that is going to work, so be it.

“If it’s free, it even better because advertising is not cheap. If they picked Bermuda, then glory to them.”

A spokeswoman for Camelot, which runs the UK lottery, said: “The campaign ran the length and breadth of the UK — more than 96 per cent of the UK population live or work within two miles of a lottery terminal.”

She added: “Bermuda was chosen because it is typically thought of as a ‘dream’ destination and also because of the alliteration you get from the two words Bognor and Bermuda — with Bognor being an example of a typical British holiday spot.”

The poster — which shows a postcard from Bermuda stuck to a fridge door — is part of the Lottery’s “today, tomorrow” campaign to promote the main Lotto game.

It has been used as a window poster in shops with Lottery terminals, on Lottery machine screens and on in-store digital media screens.

The spokeswoman admitted the National Lottery in-house creative team, who came up with the poster, had not used an actual image of the island for the postcard.

She said the idyllic beach scene had been created with “standard stock imagery to create a postcard with a retro feel depicting beautiful Bermuda.